This Duke is Mine (39 page)

“If I had to be a companion to a
murderer
in order to go to those lectures, I would,” Georgiana said with conviction.

“You raise an interesting question,” Olivia said mischievously. “Could it be that the sainted Mr. Bumtrinket, late husband of Lady Cecily herself, died a questionable death, perhaps from a potion bought from a Venetian quack?”

“
Olivia
!” Georgiana said, shocked as always.

“Worse! What if you are driven to homicide?”

“Stop that! You are being quite improper.”

“There was a talkative old woman named Bumtrinket, Who nattered day and night like a cricket,” Olivia laughed, dancing out of the way as her sister made a grab at her sleeve. “Her tongue never ceasing, Was vastly displeasing, Until her companion smacked her bum with a picket!”

“You reprobate!” The perfect princess actually chased the imperfect princess clear around the library settee before she remembered that
dignity, virtue, affability, and bearing
precluded bodily assault.

Olivia’s world, like Quin’s, was firmly in place. Georgie might be going off to Oxford and eschewing the life of a duchess, but the tattered shreds of the duchification program clung to her. And Olivia was about to fulfill her mother’s dearest hope . . . although it could be said that her success was directly tied to the failures of the very same program.

Q
uin and Olivia walked behind the Duke of Canterwick when Rupert was buried with honors: not in the family tomb, but in Westminster Abbey, as befitted an English hero who trailed clouds of glory. His place was marked by a very simple marble tablet engraved with his name and a fragment of an odd poem.

A few years later, a young poet named Keats stood puzzling over the inscription one long afternoon. Sometime after that, a middle-aged poet named Auden found himself fascinated by it for a whole week. Fifty years later, an erudite dissertation discussed the complexities of fragmentation . . . but that was all in the future, a puzzle that lay ahead for those interested in twists of language.

For Tarquin Brook-Chatfield, Duke of Sconce, complicated words never had the same incantatory force as they had before his second marriage. He never worried if he couldn’t find just the right ones.

There were only three that truly mattered, and they bore repeating: “I love you; I love you; I love you.”

“I love you.”

Epilogue

Thirteen years later

T
he young girl had ebony hair with a shock of white over her brow. Lady Penelope Brook-Chatfield didn’t know it yet—although at age twelve, she was beginning to guess—but she was the most beautiful lady of her age between Kent and London and even beyond. Cherry lips, high cheekbones, and the scream of an Amazon.

“It all adds up,” Quin mumbled. “She’s going to be a terror. They’ll line up begging to marry her, and then we’ll have to give her poor husband hardship pay.”

“Pish,” Olivia said lazily, enjoying the way the summer heat hung in the air even in the shade of their favorite elm tree, the one at the end of Ladybird Ridge. Small white butterflies danced below its lowest branches.

Penelope ran by, chasing one of her cousins with a shriek that reminded one of the new steam engines. “My papa is too!” she screamed. “My papa is
fierce
!”

“You don’t look fierce,” Olivia said, twining her hands into Quin’s hair. He lay on the quilt next to her, whispering things into the tummy that rose in the air between them.

“I’m being nice to the new baby,” he said, dropping a kiss in the appropriate place. “I’m saving all my ferocity for Penelope’s first suitors.”

A scrambling noise could be heard in the tree above them. “Be careful,” Quin called. “Mama is here and you must be particularly careful these days, you know.”

“I know.” There had been lots of rain this summer, and the tree was thick with dark leaves. Thin legs emerged from the canopy and waved for a moment, until Quin got to his feet, took hold of their owner, and placed his son safely on the ground.

“Papa!” Penelope screeched, running back toward them, her hair streaming in the wind. She must have lost another ribbon. “Aunt Georgie says that you haven’t killed any pirates, so come and tell her that you do it
all the time
!”

“You really must give her a better understanding of what a local militia can and cannot do,” Olivia murmured.

Quin put his hands on his hips and shouted, “Tell Georgiana that it’s Uncle Justin who is good at rounding up pirates.”

Penelope arrived in a flurry of long legs and silky hair. She grabbed his hand. “That’s absurd, Papa. You know that Uncle Justin is too busy singing. If you wished to kill a pirate, you could do it before breakfast. Come tell Aunt Georgie
that
.” And she dragged him away.

Master Leo Rupert, who held the title of Earl of Calderon (though he didn’t know it yet), fell onto his knees beside his mother and showed her a little collection of twigs, all broken off at precisely the same length. Leo was imaginative, dreamy, and much quieter than Penelope. He was always thinking as hard as he could, harder than most five-year-olds.

“Will you build something with the twigs?” Olivia asked, pushing herself into a sitting position. “Perhaps a house?”

“I’m too young to build a house,” Leo said, with just a shadow of annoyance. “People my age don’t build houses, Mama. You should know that.” He stowed the twigs carefully in his pocket and got up from his rather grubby knees.

“What will you do with them?”

“Alfie and I will build a road. I’ll ask Uncle Justin if he will help us.” Then he gave her a smile that was all the more beautiful for being quite grave and rarely used. “Where’s Lucy?”

“She’s sitting in the pony cart,” Olivia told him. “You know Lucy doesn’t like leaving Grandmother’s knee these days.”

“I shall show these sticks to Grandmother,” he said, and wandered off.

Olivia watched him go, wondering. Her husband returned, and sat down just behind her, spreading his hands over her belly and pulling her against his warm chest. “This baby is bigger than either of the other two,” he observed.

“Quin, do you think it’s truly all right that Leo plays with a friend named Alfie all the time—and no one can see Alfie but him?”

Quin pulled her even more snugly against him and kissed her ear. “Do you think he does it simply because it makes his Papa so happy?”

Olivia tipped her head back against his shoulder. “No. Leo would say that Alfie is his
own
friend, just as he has said, many a time over the last year. As for the size of my belly, I begin to think I might be carrying twins.”

“You’re carrying
twins
?” Quin exclaimed. “Could you rethink that idea? I’m not sure we can handle two more.”

Olivia laughed. “Is this the same man who said he wanted the nursery full of children?”

“That was before I knew how loud they can be. With Georgiana’s two, and Justin’s boy arriving tomorrow—and you know that child is a perfect terror, Olivia—the house shakes at its foundations.”

“Kiss me,” Olivia asked, looking up at her beautiful warrior prince of a husband.

His first kiss was adoring, but it gradually deepened and turned into something else: a possessive, marauding kiss. His hands edged from her tummy up toward her chest, a softer and more voluptuous curve.

“You mustn’t!” Olivia said with a little gasp, sometime later. They were both breathing quickly.

“Let’s go home,” Quin said into her ear. “I want you. I want my wife on a Sunday afternoon in a sultry, sunny English summer. I want her naked and lying on our bed so that I can—”

Penelope skittered to a halt beside them. “Are you kissing
again
? Grandmother says it’s time to go home, and Nanny says that there are lemon tarts for tea. Come
on
!” She ran ahead, her half boots twinkling under her skirts.

Quin helped his beloved to her feet, took her hand, and entertained her all the way back to the pony cart with so many whispered suggestions that she was quite rosy when they at last reached the end of Ladybird Ridge.

“Humph,” the dowager said, seeing Olivia’s face. “Too hot out here, I shouldn’t wonder. Lucy is overheated as well.”

Quin bent down and gave Lucy’s ear a tug. “Then we
must
go home,” he said, nodding to the groom driving a second cart now full of his children and their cousins. He took the reins of the pony cart. “We mustn’t discomfort Lucy. And I think my wife would also be the better for—”

Olivia elbowed him.

“A nap,” he said, kissing her nose.

The dowager duchess looked at both of them and then away at the neat fields that spread out from the seat of the Sconces. It was not every day that she thanked God that she had chosen Georgiana to undergo that absurd series of tests she had devised, and that Georgiana had brought along Olivia.

But almost every day.

Historical Note

T
his novel has so many literary antecedents that I can scarcely list them: Renaissance plays,
The Scarlet Pimpernel
, a short story by David Foster Wallace. My primary debt, of course, is to Hans Christian Andersen’s
The Princess and the Pea
. His fairy story was panned by literary critics of his day as too chatty and informal, and they greatly disliked the double entendres surrounding that intrusively hard pea found in a maiden’s bed.

Andersen’s shocking pun gave me the idea of creating a heroine with a particular propensity for improper wordplay. We think of limericks as a form popularized by Edward Lear in
The Book of Nonsense
(1846), but in fact the form is much older than that. (For example, a fascinating example appears in the September 1717 diary entry of one John Thomlinson, a reverend who liked to record the scandals occurring in his parish.) Help with Olivia’s bawdy humor came from the Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson (“
Turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogue!
”), as well as the writers of the British television classic
Black Adder
(
beardy-weirdy bottle-headed chub!
)—whom Jonson would proudly claim as offspring.

I am also indebted to Jonson for the name Cecily Bumtrinket, a servant mentioned in one of his plays, whom I turned into a duke’s daughter. Another inspired name is Lord Justin Fiebvre . . . a character written for my twelve-year-old daughter’s delight; she is among the most fervent of the Beliebers. The novel’s conclusion was inspired by
The Scarlet Pimpernel
. As a teenager, I adored the scene in which Sir Percy lifts his wife as easily as if she were a feather and carries her half a league to the shore so they can escape from war-torn France in his luxurious schooner, the
Day Dream
.

On a historical front, jack-o’-lanterns were carved from turnips, but they did exist. And the Siege of Badajoz really happened, though I altered its details to serve my purpose—to turn Rupert into a hero. In closing, I’d like to note that Rupert’s middle names are Forrest G.

G for Gump.

Acknowledgments

My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and my personal team: Kim Castillo, Franzeca Drouin, and Anne Connell. Others kindly provided specialized knowledge: more thanks go to Thomas Henkel, Ph.D., professor emeritus of physics, Wagner College; Annie Zeidman-Karpinski, science librarian, University of Oregon; and Sylvie Clemot of Rueil Malmaison, France. I am so grateful to each of you!

Questions for Readers, for Book Clubs, for Roving Page-Turners

D
ear Reader,

What follows are a few notes about less obvious aspects of
The Duke Is Mine
that might be fun to chat about—as well as some suggestions for what you might read next.

1. In the fairy tale
The Princess and the Pea
, the girl who arrives at the gate in the middle of a rainstorm turns out to be a “perfect” princess. Olivia, my heroine from
The Duke Is Mine
, by contrast, is no perfect heroine; she’s impudent, bawdy, and plump. Do you like your heroines to be less than perfect? How did you feel about the fact that she’s curvy? If you like Olivia, you might like Josie, the heroine of
Pleasure for Pleasure
: she’s another woman whose figure doesn’t suit the current style, but who learns to love herself precisely as she is.

2. In a deep sense,
The Duke Is Mine
is about perfection, and what that means. Think about Tarquin, who has an Aspergers-like inability to express emotion and relies on logic, and Rupert, who is all emotion and little logic. Olivia teaches Quin a great deal about expressing his feelings, but so does Rupert’s poem, which gives him a way to grieve for his son. What do you think makes up a perfect hero? For me, he’s a man who can run into a burning building to save his beloved—but isn’t so constrained by his masculinity that he’s unable to express emotion. Quin and Rupert are both heroes, but in very different ways. Another hero along those lines? Simeon, the hero of
When the Duke Returns
, rescues his wife from a boat occupied by violent, escaped prisoners.

3. Many readers have asked me why I’m rewriting fairy tales. The answer has to do with my father, Robert Bly, and his interest in reworking fairy tales (most famously,
Iron John
). But I also like them because they present a challenge: can I surprise my readers when they already know the outlines of the plot? If you enjoyed tracing how the design of
The Princess and the Pea
appeared and disappeared in
The Duke Is Mine
, you might also enjoy
A Kiss at Midnight
, my adaptation of
Cinderella
, as well as my version of one of everyone’s favorite fairy tales,
When Beauty Tamed the Beast
. I’m often asked whether I’ll write more fairy tales; as I write this letter, I’m working on
The Ugly Duchess (Duckling)
, and I can envision at least one more fairy tale after that.